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Cord cutting is real. Even if cable companies won’t acknowledge it yet.

Cable companies may have some very intricate ways of protecting their television business, but holding media companies to very strict partnership deals isn’t going to retain subscribers forever. In addition to competition from telecoms and satellite providers, cable companies are dealing with consumers who don’t want to pay their steep monthly TV bills.

But according to The New York Times, Americans are not giving up on their cable. That assessment doesn’t account for the latest quarterly estimates. Or the large numbers of people who aren’t cutting their cable so much as avoiding it entirely.

The New York Times documents a few examples of people who are disgruntled cable customers, or who tried to get rid of cable and came running back, like Bill Mitchell, a 40-year-old engineer in Winston-Salem, N.C:

“He
cancelled his Time Warner cable service and connected his flat-panel
television to the Internet to watch sitcoms and his other favorite
shows, using products from Apple and Boxee.

“Recently, grudgingly, he returned to his $130-a-month cable
subscription, partly because his family wanted programming that was not
available online.

“’The problem is, we’re hooked on shows on HBO
and Showtime, like ‘True Blood’ and ‘Dexter,’’ he said, adding that he
wishes he could buy only the shows he wants instead of big bundles of
channels he doesn’t. “It’s so frustrating.”

And yet, The Times notes, cable customers aren’t voting with their feet. They’re continuing to pay exorbinant cable fees because they don’t see a viable alternative. As The Times notes:

“In the battle for the living room, 2010 seems to be the year that the incumbent is strengthening its foothold.”

But is that really the case? According to a New York Times/CBS News poll out this month, 88% of
respondents said they pay for traditional TV service. And only 15% of those
subscribers had considered replacing their subscriptions with Internet video options
like Hulu and YouTube.

But the piece quickly skips past the younger generation of consumers who are not as easily appeased by cable companies, writing:

“Respondents under the age of 45 were significantly more likely than
older ones to say they had considered replacing their pay TV service.”

Many college kids and younger consumers who are accustomed to getting video for free are simply never becoming cable subscribers. They can’t cut that cord, because they never signed on to use it to begin with. Furthermore, there’s the fact that cable companies actually are losing current subscribers.

The New York Times cites Sanford C. Bernstein numbers, saying that
the investment firm’s preliminary numbers for the second quarter show a
slight drop in subscribers, but attributes that to this time of year,
“which is traditionally weak.”

Meanwhile, business intelligence company SNL Kagan notes that cable companies lost
711,000 subscribers in the second quarter of 2010 — the biggest quarterly loss in
cable TV’s history.

Six out of eight cable TV operators also reported their worst
subscriber losses ever last quarter. Cable companies are also competing
with satellite and telephone companies for subscribers now — together
those groups gained 495,000 subscribers.

That still means that about 216,000 people got rid of subscription TV services entirely.

Cable companies have been very strict about exclusivity with their partners — trying to maintain their role in the lives of their subscribers and keeping premium content off the internet.

But in the end, unhappy customers are easily lost customers. And keeping cable prices high and consumers paying through obligation is a marketing strategy that can’t last forever.

Together, they set out to create a metric for judging influence online, and the result became what is now called The Influence Project, which seeks to find “2010’s Most Influential Person.”Almost immediately, the project came under fire online, from journalists, bloggers and self-titled influencers who thought Fast Company was measuring digital influence incorrectly.

The jury’s still out, but voting for The Influence Project comes to an end August 15. I spoke with Harris and Brendan Gahan, Mekanism’s director of social media, to find out how it all came together. And if they think they’ll be crowning the most influential person of the year next week.

We’re in the land of startups this week, spending a day in the life of Ann-Marie Rossiter, Head of Marketing at events marketplace HeadBox. As usual, we’ll be finding out what it takes to succeed in this role, from skills and tools to the daily routine. If you’d like to appear in this feature, get […]